Races where the environment matters. Sort of.http://www.hcn.org/issues/44.18/races-where-the-environment-matters-sort-of
Though environmental issues won't be decisive at the ballot box, candidates' green records could still matter -- if environmental super PACs have their way.Environmentalists can't contain their glee about Jay Inslee's candidacy for governor of Washington. "I can count on one hand the members of Congress … that are like Jay Inslee," gushed League of Conservation Voters president Gene Karpinski at a Washington chapter event last October. The national LCV usually stays out of state politics, but at that event, Inslee received its first gubernatorial endorsement in 30-some years. "We want to help him get elected to be the greenest governor in the United States," Karpinski said.

As a Democratic congressman representing the Yakima Valley, and later Bainbridge Island near Seattle, Inslee built his political identity around tireless clean energy advocacy. That's unlikely to be a deciding factor this year in Washington, though, where, like most places, "the economy dominates," says pollster Stuart Elway, with education "right behind it."

But candidates' environmental records could impact election results for other reasons: Environmental super PACs and other political advocacy groups, offshoots of the League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club, and the like, are launching aggressive campaigns nationwide against Republicans seen as anti-environmental. They're spending an unprecedented amount, with bigger sums going to fewer races than in 2010, in an attempt to "have a disproportionate impact" on key seats, according to a memo by Navin Nayak, LCV's senior vice president for campaigns. Particularly in the Senate, explained Nayak, "it is critical that we maintain a firewall (against) the extreme policies being passed" in the House.

New Mexico U.S. Senate: Martin Heinrich, D, vs. Heather Wilson, R

Heinrich and Wilson are competing for the seat being vacated by Jeff Bingaman, D, chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Heinrich, a former New Mexico Wilderness Alliance board member who calls himself a clean-energy and public-lands champion, was LCV's first endorsement this season. Wilson, a former congresswoman and national security advisor, is a moderate Republican, running on debt reduction, a free-enterprise philosophy, and an all-of-the-above energy strategy. Through PACs and 501(c)(4)s, an environmental coalition including LCV, the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council outspent conservative powerhouses like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Karl Rove's super PAC American Crossroads this summer and fall, running attacks against Wilson for protecting oil company interests over public health. Though this was expected to be one of the closest races of the season, recent polls give Heinrich a relatively comfortable lead.

Washington Governor: Jay Inslee, D, vs. Rob McKenna, R

Besides the main PACs supporting each candidate – both funded primarily by the partisan governors' associations – Washington Conservation Voters plans to be among the most lavish outside spenders in the game. McKenna is much more moderate on environmental issues than his party as a whole – supporting, for instance, EPA's regulation of greenhouse gases. Still, since Inslee "has been one of the very strongest environmental leaders in the U.S. Congress," says WCV executive director Brendon Cechovic, in mid-October the group was preparing to unleash "well over" $500,000, mostly on direct mail to undecided voters attacking McKenna and promoting Inslee. They will also have a 1,000-strong volunteer army knocking on doors. In 2008, WCV spent only $50,000 on the governor's race, says Cechovic.

Montana U.S. Senate: Jon Tester, D, vs. Denny Rehberg, R

This toss-up race is a top priority for environmentalists not only because it could prove decisive to the Senate's partisan balance but because Rehberg, Montana's only congressman, has a career score of just 6 percent from LCV for pro-environment votes (versus 96 percent from the Independent Petroleum Association of America). Tester, meanwhile, has voted against continued tax breaks for oil companies and bills rolling back environmental regulations. LCV has joined with a local sportsmen's PAC to run television ads and direct mail campaigns against Rehberg, and is knocking on doors to get out the vote. They say they've recruited 28,000 Tester supporters with spotty voting histories to vote by mail, and will ramp up similar efforts this month. Tester won by less than 4,000 votes in 2006, so turnout will be crucial for both sides.

U.S. House, California 7th District: Ami Bera, D, vs. Dan Lungren, R

Unlike the presidential candidates, in a recent debate Bera and incumbent Lungren had an entire exchange about climate change. Bera believes in manmade warming, while Lungren said in the debate "we don't know" what's causing it. Lungren voted against the 2009 climate bill and opposes EPA regulation of greenhouse gases. Bera's climate outlook helped him earn the Sacramento Bee's endorsement. (In 2010, the first time Bera challenged Lungren, the paper endorsed Lungren.) Thanks to redistricting, the House seat is now more competitive for Democrats. LCV and the Sierra Club have together spent more on this race than the largest union spender, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

]]>No publisherPolitics2012/10/31 02:00:00 GMT-6ArticleThe West's super PAC megadonorshttp://www.hcn.org/issues/44.18/races-where-the-environment-matters-sort-of/the-wests-super-pac-megadonors
A few wealthy Westerners (and others) are attempting to influence elections via personal checks to super PACs and their more secretive counterparts, 501(c)(4)s.No publisherPoliticsInfographic2012/10/29 02:00:00 GMT-6ArticleWesterners' presidential proclivities http://www.hcn.org/issues/44.18/westerners-presidential-proclivities
Red-blue swings in presidential elections since 1960 show the region’s political landscape has always been dynamic.The Democratic Party has taken a shine to the West of late, seeing the region as its best shot to grow the base. Indeed, changing demographics -- rising populations of minorities and educated whites, and a declining white working class -- have put a few formerly solid red states into play for Democrats in presidential and statewide contests. Colorado and Nevada are crucial presidential swing states this year, as in 2008, and competitive Senate races are being fought in Montana, Nevada and New Mexico. A look back at presidential election results is a useful reminder that the Western political landscape has always been dynamic. The West Coast's reliably blue hue, for instance, is a relatively recent phenomenon. And the times, they are still a changin': Shocking as it may seem, even Arizona is becoming more competitive.]]>No publisherPoliticsInfographic2012/10/29 02:00:00 GMT-6ArticleEnvironment 2012http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/environment-2012
How environmental issues are playing in two important Western racesEnvironmental issues have barely registered a blip on political radar screens this campaign season. Sure, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney had a notable bickering match about drilling on public lands in their town hall debate. But it devolved into a game of one-upmanship as to who would drill more. Yes, Obama continues to promote clean energy when he talks about his energy strategy and the economies of the future. But rarely does he mention that political boogey man: climate change. As the pundits say, it really is the economy, stupid.

Of course, the lack of real discourse about our environmental problems -- and the merits of liberal versus conservative solutions to them -- doesn't mean the 2012 elections will be inconsequential for air and water, birds and bees, not to mention our own health and well-being. Far from it.

The nail biter of a U.S. Senate race being fought between Republican Denny Rehberg and Democrat Jon Tester in Montana, for instance, could very well determine just how hostile Congress is to forward progress on environmental policy. Republican Senator Jim Inhofe from Oklahoma visited Montana this week to campaign with Rehberg. He brought this message: A vote for Rehberg could help Republicans take hold of both the House and Senate, and when that happens, we won't have so much trouble rolling back environmental regulations.

Specifically, Inhofe railed in Montana against controls on mercury and other toxic gases spouted from coal-fired power plants. Tester voted against an Inhofe-sponsored bill this summer to whack new limits on mercury pollution from coal plants, and Rehberg has labeled him a job killer for it. (At least one coal plant in Montana says it will close to avoid retrofitting to control its pollution.) Nevermind that the whole point of the limits is to reduce premature deaths and asthma among kids. As our contributing editor Judith Lewis Mernit wrote so eloquently earlier this year, "Unfortunately, in politics, death seems to be the accepted consequence of protecting industry's bottom line."

Environmentalists are working hard for Democrats in a few key Senate races, including the one in Montana, in order to maintain a firewall against bills coming out of what's been called the most anti-environmental U.S. House in history (we'll have more on the spending strategies of environmental super PACs next week). But, as Brendon Cechovic, executive director of Washington Conservation Voters, told me recently: "Even if we re-elect the President, and hold on to the U.S. Senate, there's still not a lot of prospect for forward progress in Congress."

Yet that doesn't mean environmentalists have been reduced to playing defense in perpetuity. "We believe in the power of the states to drive progress," says Cechovic. That's why his group, with a big financial assist from the national League of Conservation Voters, is going to bat for Jay Inslee, the Democratic candidate for governor in Washington, who is considered one of the greenest candidates running for any office anywhere in the country. Inslee is the first gubernatorial candidate to earn an endorsement from the national League in about 30 years, an indication says Cechovic, that the race is "a big priority for the national environmental community."

Inslee, a former congressman, is a tireless clean energy advocate -- it's the issue he built his political identity around -- and growing clean energy is central to his plan to correct Washington's economic course. He's running against the state's attorney general, Rob McKenna, who is to the left of his party on environmental issues -- he believes climate change is real, and in the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases, for instance. This -- along with the fact that Washington is home to many fiscal conservatives but social liberals and has a libertarian streak -- helps explain why he's running neck-and-neck with Inslee in a state that seems to go consistently blue in statewide contests. (Obama has Washington tied up, and so does Sen. Maria Cantwell, D, who's up for re-election this year.) "Everyone is an environmentalist (in Washington)," says pollster Stuart Elway. "So the Republican candidates are more moderate," on both the environment and issues like abortion (McKenna is also pro-choice). But this also means that environmental issues don't tend to play prominent roles in campaigns, he says. "(They) are largely taken for granted in the Pacific Northwest. Unless there is a focusing issue, like shoreline management, it doesn't rise to the level of political debate."

In Elway's estimation, that's been the case in the 2012 governor's race. "Jay Inslee is a pretty strong environmentalist -- it's part of his whole package," he says. "But in terms of specific issues in his campaign, it hasn't been much of a factor." Instead, he says, "the economy dominates, and education is right behind it."

Still, even if the environment isn't at the forefront of the debate between the candidates, environmental policy would inevitably be more central to an Inslee administration than a McKenna administration. "A Jay Inslee in the governor's mansion is our best shot at moving forward," says Cechovic of Washington Conservation Voters. His group's political action committee will spend at least $500,000 to help elect Inslee this year, he says. "Four years ago we spent $50,000 in the governor’s raise. It’s a reflection of how pumped the environmental community is about the race."

]]>No publisherPoliticsBlog Post2012/10/24 06:00:00 GMT-6ArticleFall books offer journeys of the mindhttp://www.hcn.org/issues/44.17/fall-books-offer-journeys-of-the-mind
New Western fiction and nonfiction for fall 2012.Here in western Colorado, most days unfold under azure skies and stubbornly brilliant sunshine. When rains do visit, they're usually brief -- an hour, or maybe two. So when autumn unexpectedly shrouds our valleys under thick gray clouds that dribble for days on end, our world feels utterly transformed -- the pillowy, unfamiliar heavens almost magical.

These chilly days deliver a simple pleasure: permission to stay indoors, nose-deep in an engrossing read. This fall, we're looking forward to being further transported by two up-and-coming authors who dwell in the surreal. There's Rise, by L. Annette Binder, a collection of "fairy tales," according to Goodreads, that take place in the author's home state of Colorado, with characters that exist "at the fringes of everyday life." And there's Kira Brady's debut novel, Hearts of Darkness, an eerie thriller set in an imaginary, seedier version of Seattle, involving a battle between supernatural clans.

A number of literary heavyweights also have new work out, including Sherman Alexie, Ivan Doig, Louise Erdrich, Michael Chabon and Rick Bass. John Nichols delivers a comedic quest for familial redemption in New Mexico's mountains; Barbara Kingsolver, a stirring and human tale about global climate change; and Timothy Egan, the story of photographer Edward Curtis, who spent his career documenting dozens of American Indian tribes.

We're also proud to welcome new books by members of the High Country News family. Former HCN intern Josh Garrett-Davis' Ghost Dances is a coming-of-age memoir and cultural and natural history of the Great Plains. HCN book critic Erica Olsen has a new collection of short stories with Western settings; board member Wendy Pabich, a book on water conservation. And contributing editor Craig Childs introduces Apocalyptic Planet, a lyrical exploration of our ever-changing environments. Following are some of the more intriguing arrivals. Cally Carswell

(NOTE: If a book is currently available, no publication month is shown)

FICTION

Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories Sherman Alexie, Grove, October

Rise L. Annette Binder, Sarabande

A Growing Season Sue Boggio and Mare Pearl, University of New Mexico Press

Hearts of Darkness Kira Brady, Kensington/Zebra

Telegraph Avenue: A Novel Michael Chabon, Harper

Have You Seen Marie? Sandra Cisneros, Knopf, October

The Bartender's Tale Ivan Doig, Riverhead

The Round House: A Novel Louise Erdrich, Harper, October

The Last Shepherd Martin Etchart, University of Nevada Press, November

An Unattended Death Victoria Jenkins, Permanent Press, October

Blackberry Winter: A Novel Sarah Jio, Plume

At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories Kij Johnson, Small Beer Press

Flight Behavior Barbara Kingsolver, Harper, November

The Block Captain's Daughter Demetria Martinez, University of Oklahoma Press

Grind Mark Maynard, Torrey House Press, December

The Snow Leopard's Tale Thomas McIntyre, Bangtail Press

The Roots of the Olive Tree: A Novel Courtney Miller Santo, William Morrow

And HCN's editorial fellow Neil LaRubbio has a travelogue from his visit to the Gila Wilderness in the wake of the Whitewater-Baldy fire, the largest wildfire in New Mexico history, which burned through the Gila earlier this year. More fires have been allowed to burn in the Gila than in most of our nation's forests, and Neil went down there to see if that shaped how the area burned this year, as scientists hoped. We'll be printing his story in the magazine soon, but until then, listen to his travelogue!

]]>No publisherPoliticsBlog Post2012/10/03 06:00:00 GMT-6ArticleWest of 100: Fire & Brimstonehttp://www.hcn.org/articles/west-of-100-fire-brimstone
The backstory to Emily Guerin's report on the scientific debate over how "normal" severe fire is, and a travelogue from the Gila Wilderness in the wake of this year's massive blaze.

In this edition of West of 100, we've got a couple of stories about wildfire. First, the backstory to Emily Guerin's piece, "Fire scientists fight over what Western forests should look like." We'll talk with Emily about why the debate over a new study arguing that severe fire may be more normal than we thought became so emotional among fire scientists. And Neil LaRubbio brings us a travelogue from the Gila Wilderness in the wake of the Whitewater-Baldy fire -- the biggest blaze in New Mexico history.

]]>No publisherPoliticsMultimediaAudio2012/09/25 10:45:00 GMT-6ArticleGrand Canyon floods and native fish http://www.hcn.org/issues/44.16/can-pallid-sturgeon-hang-on-in-the-overworked-missouri-river/grand-canyon-floods-and-native-fish
Scientists thought periodic, controlled floods in the Grand Canyon might help native fish. But so far, there's little evidence they have. The last time the Colorado River plunged unhindered through the Grand Canyon, swollen by snowmelt to 126,000 cubic-feet per second, was in 1957. Glen Canyon Dam rose soon after, delivering cheap hydropower and reliable water to cities, farms and industry.

For native fish, the transformation was debilitating. Most of the river's sediment -- which built sandbars that shelter backwater habitat favored by young fish -- settled in Lake Powell, the reservoir behind the dam. And the water downstream became much colder, since dam discharge comes from deep in the reservoir. This limited the ability of native fish to spawn in the mainstem Colorado, and stifled young fishes' growth there. "Growth is a proxy for survival," says Ted Kennedy, a USGS biologist with the Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center. "They have to get to a size where they're large enough to not be eaten by other fish." Four species have disappeared from the Grand Canyon, and another, the humpback chub, is endangered.

The scarcity of sandbars, which make primo camping spots, also disappointed river runners and hikers. So in the late 1990s, a plan was hatched to allow controlled floods to sweep the canyon. Scientists theorized that high water releases from the dam would mobilize tributary-deposited sediment and build up shrunken sandbars. "Flooding is a natural part of river dynamics," says Kennedy. "There was a lot of hope that it would be beneficial to the system as a whole," much as it was hoped that spills over Fort Peck would boost the Missouri River ecosystem.

The Grand Canyon releases -- made from low in the reservoir -- weren't thwarted as the Fort Peck spills were. Since 1996, three experimental floods have been unleashed, and scientists have gained important insight into their effect. Sixty-hour floods of around 40,000 cubic-feet per second in 2004 and 2008, timed to follow natural flooding in tributaries, successfully enlarged sandbars, though they eventually diminished. The floods also created more backwater habitat. But fish didn't benefit as hoped. The water didn't warm to optimal temperatures, says Kennedy, and the habitat quickly vanished once normal operations resumed. Humpback chub still largely ignored the main stem for spawning, crowding instead into the Little Colorado River, a warm, silty tributary.

The takeaway, says Kennedy: Floods alone aren't likely to boost native fish, since they can't remedy other alterations to the natural system -- especially water temperature.

It's even possible that the 2008 flood had a slight negative impact on chub, by boosting mainstem invertebrates that rainbow trout love. The non-native sport fish thrives in cold water, competes with chub for forage, and preys on them. Newly hatched trout feasted on the invertebrate bounty, according to a new study of the post-flood food web, and their numbers skyrocketed: Near the Little Colorado's mouth, trout catch rates grew by 800 percent. It's not yet clear how that's impacted chub.

Nevertheless, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced this spring that the controlled floods will begin taking place whenever conditions allow. If they occur annually or more often, their impacts could change. Regular experimental floods on a Swiss river took three years to shift the composition of organisms at the bottom of the food web, which influences which other species thrive. Native trout redds, for example, increased sixfold.

"That probably wouldn't have happened if they hadn't (flooded that river) consistently," says Wyatt Cross, a Montana State University ecologist who researched the 2008 rainbow trout bump. "We don't know how multiple floods will affect the Grand Canyon. But we want to."

]]>No publisherWildlifeColorado River2012/09/17 02:00:00 GMT-6ArticleSalvation for our dam nation?http://www.hcn.org/issues/44.16/salvation-for-our-dam-nation
Although dam removals are occurring across the West, they're the exception more than the rule. And some dwindling species, like pallid sturgeon, may not be able to wait for our rivers to return to normal.On Washington's White Salmon River last October 26th, sirens bleated, a man barked, "Fire in the hole!" and a cavity was blasted in the bottom of the 125-foot high Condit Dam. A few suspenseful seconds passed. Then, the reservoir behind the dam erupted through the hole and became a river again, although the water was so thick with sediment that it looked more like an ashy plume of smoke.

The excitement among conservationists was palpable. The demolition of the Condit Dam -- and that of two dams on Washington's Elwha River, also begun last fall -- kick off grand experiments in river restoration. Both rivers once hosted robust salmon runs. But the dams, built in the early 20th century, weren't outfitted with fish ladders. They blocked access to all but a few miles of spawning habitat, and salmon numbers plummeted. No one knew how fish -- or even riparian plants -- would respond to the reopened rivers. But most everyone agreed that the dams' demise was likely the salmon's best shot at salvation. Sure enough, migrating salmon were spied above the defunct dams this summer.

These events prompted the advocacy group American Rivers to declare 2011 the "year of the river." (A symbolic benchmark was also reached last year: 1,000 dams, most of them small, have now been stripped from U.S. rivers.)

But stories of rebirth like those being written on the Elwha and White Salmon are still more the exception than the rule. Their dams had become obsolete, providing negligible amounts of hydropower that their operators decided they could easily do without. That's not a political reality shared by most of the West's big dams.

So what of the native fish still struggling to adjust to the novel environments those dams created? There's a movement under way to lift them up too -- by simply reinventing how dams are managed. On Utah's Green River, for instance, scientists are experimenting with bigger-than-usual releases from Flaming Gorge Dam when endangered razorback sucker larvae are detected in the river. The idea is to reconnect the main channel with nursery habitat in the floodplain and give young fish a better shot at survival.

And about a decade ago, scientists devised a plan to modify water releases from the Missouri River's Fort Peck Dam in eastern Montana to benefit the little-known pallid sturgeon, which is on the verge of vanishing. But as former HCN editorial fellow Marian Lyman Kirst reports in this issue's cover story, implementing the plan has proven extremely complicated, and the dogged efforts of a handful of scientists and river managers to get wild pallid sturgeon to grow their numbers on their own have so far been largely ineffective. What the fish ultimately need to bounce back remains uncertain. Yet it's clear there are limits to what can be done for pallid sturgeon on an overworked river like the Missouri. There are no easy fixes. And unfortunately, the solutions that offer the most promise for sturgeon may be more than the river's dams -- and all of the people that depend on them -- can give.

On a bright February morning, a curiously adorned cargo van crept down a dirt road in northeastern Utah's Uintah Basin. A steel pole with a jumble of funnels strapped to its tip rose from the roof's rear, and the vehicle moved so slowly that its speed didn't even register -- a good thing, considering that its occupants were less focused on the road than they were on their computer screen's undulating lines.

"We're on the edge of it now," said driver Peter Edwards, an air chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "The blue line is the methane -- you'll see that jump right up. And we'll see the nitrogen oxide go up." As we entered a natural-gas well's plume, the funnels inhaled air, and instruments inside the van analyzed it. A decidedly low-tech piece of equipment -- a piece of string tied to the antenna -- stood rigid in the wind, allowing the researchers to eyeball which pieces of well-pad equipment they were downwind of when emissions spiked.

In recent years, frenzied drilling has brought many changes to this sparsely populated patch of the Colorado Plateau. Vernal, population around 9,000, has gained numerous hotels, a handful of Main Street retail stores, a Lowe's and several chain restaurants. Meanwhile, Uintah County's coffers have grown pleasantly plump with mineral royalties.

The boom has also brought some unexpected byproducts: concentrations of ground-level ozone that, on the worst days, rival those of the most polluted cities, where ozone and other airborne wastes combine to create smog. Ozone can cause acute respiratory ailments and aggravate asthma. At times, its concentrations here are almost double what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe. (How the ozone has affected local health, though, has not been studied.)

It's a puzzling phenomenon that a team of NOAA scientists, including Edwards, spent this year trying to untangle. Unlike urban areas, where ozone events are a hallmark of summer, levels spike here in winter. So far, that is known to occur in only one other place in the world -- Wyoming's Upper Green River Basin, home to the Jonah and Pinedale Anticline gas fields.

Effective strategies for stifling ozone have been slow to take shape, in large part because how it forms in winter is still only partially understood. Even basic data -- such as the source-by-source emissions inventory the van was collecting -- have been lacking. Many years into a region-wide drilling boom, this points to an uneasy reality: Energy development has significantly outpaced our grasp of its effects on the environment and public health.

"It's important to understand the impacts of our energy economy," says Jim Roberts, a NOAA scientist who headed up the Utah ozone research last winter. "We may need to make choices around that" -- such as how rapidly we punch new wells, and how tightly drillers are required to control certain emissions. It's an issue of national importance, he says. "Why don't you see (wintertime ozone) in eastern Colorado? Why not western Pennsylvania or upstate New York?"

In 2005, the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality began monitoring in the Upper Green River Basin in winter to get a handle on air quality before major oil and gas development occurred. Drilling had revved up the year before, and that first winter, ozone concentrations were nearly 25 percent above what's allowed under federal law.

The data shocked even the most well-versed ozone scientists. It's surprising enough to see this happening so far from the congested highways at the root of urban ozone and smog. But the timing of the episodes, in winter, was even more baffling, because the humidity and intense solar radiation thought necessary to start the chemical reaction that turns certain pollutants into ozone were missing.

---- By 2009, NOAA researchers had pieced together circumstantial information about Wyoming's worsening winter ozone events. Ozone spiked when temperature inversions trapped and concentrated pollutants near the valley floor. Extensive snow cover made a difference, too: Sunlight reflecting off it created enough radiation, scientists theorized, to set off the reactions that create ozone. In winter 2010, startlingly high ozone levels were documented in Utah's Uintah Basin under similar conditions.

In both places, booming natural gas fields seemed the source of ozone's primary ingredients: nitrogen oxides from diesel trucks and engines that run compressors and other equipment; and volatile organic compounds, present in the gas itself.

Knowing the source of emissions is enough to devise remedies for many pollution problems. Take sulfate particles, another contributor to smog. Power plants emit sulfur dioxide, which creates sulfate. When plants install scrubbers that capture most sulfur dioxide emissions, you get fewer sulfate particles in the air.

Ozone is much more complicated. "It's a weird beast," says Leonard Herr, the Bureau of Land Management's air-quality specialist for Utah. "You can't just control one thing." Nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are the basic building blocks, but you also need reactive atoms or molecules called free radicals -- created when sunlight reacts with things like nitrous acid, a byproduct of NOx, or ozone itself -- to jumpstart the process, the way a spark makes fire out of fuel. But there's no universal recipe; which free radicals react with which VOCs and NOx differs from region to region. Moreover, some environments are sensitive to NOx, meaning that if it's reduced, ozone will be too. Others are sensitive to VOCs. It's even possible to reduce NOx in a VOC sensitive environment, and end up slightly increasing ozone.

So managing ozone requires extraordinary prudence, plus a nuanced understanding of the chemistry that creates it in each locale. Neither Utah nor Wyoming has reached that level of understanding.

The NOAA team intended to change that. For six weeks last winter, they worked out of a sort of man camp in the heart of the gas field. A rental RV -- housing for grad students monitoring a balloon measuring pollution above the surface -- sat alongside trailers and what looked like miniature shipping containers, jammed with instruments measuring pollutants. Wind sensors helped the researchers see how plumes moved. And a team toured the field daily in the van, collecting real-time emissions data from each link of the production chain. If the chemists in the temporary labs could figure out which pollutants were the ozone conspirators, the van could help identify their origins.

Only two things were missing: snow and inversions. The scientists charged with unraveling the ozone riddle and recommending fixes found themselves in the ironic position of wishing for dirty days for the sake of science. But they never materialized. And so, there was no ozone to study.

"We're kind of stuck halfway right now," Roberts says. They did collect some information: They ruled out a nearby coal-fired power plant as a major contributor; although it spews plenty of NOx, its plume travels above the level of inversions. And they believe wintertime ozone has been seen only in the Utah and Wyoming basins because of the way topography restricts air movement during inversions. VOC emissions were found to be especially high from evaporation ponds and during flowback -- the period after a well is hydrofractured when the fracking fluid, gas and other hydrocarbons are regurgitated. The compounds found aren't typically very reactive in small amounts, says Roberts, but their concentrations were very high. NOx levels were sufficient to create ozone, but not particularly high.

"We think there may be some chemistry happening in the snow itself," he says, but it couldn't be studied since there was no snow.

They suspect that this year, with no ozone events, was the anomaly, not the previous two, when snow cover was thick and ozone levels were frequently high. So NOAA, the state and their partners hope to procure funding to study the basin again next year. "The emissions inventory work, gathering fingerprints of sources was successful," says Brock LeBaron, deputy director of air quality for the Utah DEQ, and the state's point person for the study. "Still, the fundamental question is: Should you go after the VOCs, or should you go after NOx?"

Without an answer, it's hard to draft a sure-fire mitigation plan. In the meantime, though, regulators in both Wyoming and Utah are "casting a big net" when it comes to pollution controls, as Wyoming's air quality chief, Steve Dietrich, puts it. "We'd be remiss if we concentrated on VOCs and didn't concentrate on NOx. So we're trying to reduce both of them."

"Green completions," which capture hydrocarbons and VOCs during flowback, are required throughout the Upper Green River Basin, and for new projects in the Uintah Basin, where such projects have been approved only if they install technology such as low-bleed valves to control VOC leaks from well-pad equipment; minimize truck trips; use clean-burning engines at drill rigs; and add any additional controls deemed necessary as regulators' understanding of local ozone chemistry advances. The state and BLM also hope to work with industry to ensure no net increase in emissions, beginning next winter. Wyoming drillers have taken similar steps. Most of these measures aren't legally required, but the industry and states have been trying to avoid becoming 'non-attainment' zones for ozone pollution, an EPA designation that can bring mandatory -- and probably expensive -- regulations, and could limit new energy development.

Since 2009, the industry estimates that it's reduced VOC emissions by 21 percent, and NOx by 17 percent, in the Upper Green River Basin. Yet despite these emissions cuts, the problem persists. The EPA just declared the Upper Green River Basin a non-attainment zone, underscoring the need for better information to shape a strategy. Utah lacks such statistics because it's just begun requiring NOx and VOC controls of big new projects in development.

"The Uintah Basin has a couple years, probably, where we can try some out-of-the-box proactive strategies,"before the EPA enters the fray, says the BLM's Herr. Still, in that short time, he says, "It's kind of a long shot that we'll be able to solve it."

]]>No publisherEnergy & Industry2012/09/10 02:00:00 GMT-6ArticleConventioneering http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/conventioneering
Convention rhetoric spotlights the ever-widening divide between Republicans and Democrats on the environmentThe Democrats didn't throw environmentalists many bones at their convention this week -- at least not any with much meat on them. Yet it was striking how even bland, unspecific statements about the environment drew stark contrasts between the parties. Take a few lines from Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee's speech, who is not a Democrat but an ex-Republican turned Independent. Speaking for those in the political middle -- "traditional conservatives," as he called them -- who support President Obama's re-election, Chafee said: "We love this land -- literally. We believe in environmental stewardship -- protecting our air and our water."

I know what you're thinking: BORing! Taken at face value, Chafee's words would seem to rank among the least important political proclamations on the environment of all time. Yet at last week's Republican National Convention, perhaps the most telling lines about the GOP's environmental philosophy came from Mitt Romney, who said mockingly, "President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family." In Romney's wake, Lincoln "stuck in the '70s" Chafee's declaration that Obama's tribe believes in environmental stewardship seemed suddenly significant. It became a defiant, "we hold these truths to be self-evident" sort of statement.

Of course, it's not news that this GOP, in its current incarnation, is a pretty anti-environmental beast. Still, I find myself continually surprised by how radically the party has shifted its view in recent years.

Let's take a trip down memory lane: Brad Plumer wrote a great post for Wonkblog recently contrasting the GOP's official platforms in 2008 and 2012 that illuminated this transformation. Plumer points first to a section on climate change in the 2008 platform, which asserted: "The same human economic activity that has brought freedom and opportunity to billions has also increased the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. While the scope and longterm consequences of this are the subject of ongoing scientific research, common sense dictates that the United States should take measured and reasonable steps today to reduce any impact on the environment. Those steps, if consistent with our global competitiveness will also be good for our national security, our energy independence, and our economy."

This year, Mitt Romney's only nod to the environment created a baffling false dichotomy between what's good for planet and what's good for people. (Though in less visible quarters, Romney has at least struck a more nuanced tone.) The section on climate change has disappeared from the platform. It now advocates taking "quick action to prohibit the EPA from moving forward with new greenhouse gas regulations," and restoring scientific integrity to public research institutions, something it claims "is especially important when the causes and long-range effect of a phenomenon are uncertain." Nevermind that among the vast majority of the world's scientists, such fundamental uncertainties about climate change don't exist.

Plumer compared and contrasted the Democrats' platforms as well, and they too have changed their ways, taking more of a shine to domestic fossil fuel production after pledging to end "the tyranny of oil" in 2008, and adopting what Plumer calls "a less apocalyptic take on climate change." The total package, as Plumer puts it, "tries awkwardly to juggle these competing concerns," embracing oil and gas drilling while acknowledging climate change as "one of the biggest threats of this generation."

Answering Romney's climate jab in Charlotte last night, Obama said: "My plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet. Because climate change is not a hoax. More drought and floods and wildfire are not a joke. They're a threat to our children's future. And in this election, you can do something about it."

Environmentalists, who have been disappointed by Obama's lack of bold action on our climate conundrum, may be justifiably skeptical. His speech last night likely frustrated more than satisfied them: the president briefly cheered clean coal, and touted his support for an ongoing expansion of domestic oil and gas drilling, while promising to "not let oil companies write this country's energy plan or endanger our coastlines or collect another $4 billion in corporate welfare from our taxpayers." Awkward as this balance may be, at least somebody is still trying to strike it -- something the GOP seems increasingly disinterested in.

Obama also told the crowd of party faithful last night that, "When you pick up that ballot to vote, you will face the clearest choice of any time in a generation." On the environment, at least, that appears to be true.

]]>No publisherPoliticsBlog Post2012/09/07 08:56:51 GMT-6ArticleBeyond ozonehttp://www.hcn.org/issues/44.15/cracking-the-ozone-code-in-the-gas-fields/beyond-ozone
Researchers attempt to tease out the health effects of emissions from oil and gas drilling.Wintertime ozone is just one surprising air-quality problem that has appeared as gas fields balloon in size and creep closer to communities. "It's possible that emissions have been there all along," since the industry isn't new, says Ramón Alvarez, an Environmental Defense Fund air-quality expert. But with drilling under increasing scrutiny, he says, "People are appropriately wondering, 'What does this mean for my health?' "

The answer remains largely unknown. "To determine a health effect, you need a large number of exposures occurring, and for them to occur over a long enough time for people to develop an effect," says Alvarez. "When you're in a rural environment, those things are hard to match up."

Still, researchers are trying to get a handle on health risks. A study by the Colorado School of Public Health found that the risk of cancer and other illnesses in Garfield County, Colo., was greatest for residents within a half-mile of wells, where volatile organic compounds around homes were documented at five times safe levels.

Another important question concerns the industry's carbon footprint. This year, emissions of methane -- a powerful greenhouse gas -- from Colorado's Denver-Julesburg Basin were found to be about twice as high as the industry had reported, raising doubts over whether natural gas truly is a more climate-friendly fuel than coal.

]]>No publisherEnergy & Industry2012/09/03 01:00:00 GMT-6ArticleNew podcast, all about droughthttp://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/new-podcast-all-about-drought
An oral history of the 1950s drought, and a new study on the 2000 - 2004 drought, and how it stacks up against what we can expect in the futureThe latest edition of HCN's monthly podcast, West of 100, is now available for your listening pleasure, and it covers something that's on everyone's mind this summer: drought.

As of August, more than half of the country was experiencing at least moderate drought -- and in many places it was worse than that, with drought conditions that are considered severe, extreme, or exceptional. Huge corn crops in the Midwest won't even be harvested. The Mississippi River is being dredged to maintain a channel deep enough for barges. Here in Paonia, Colo., High Country News' hometown, irrigation season ended more than a month earlier than last year.

Of course, drought has always been a fact of Western life. But with the specter of climate change hanging over every extreme weather event these days, this year's drought, and the dry years that have preceded it, have people wondering: Is this normal? Is this the new normal?

So for this edition of West of 100, we're going to take a look at droughts past, present and future. We're venturing a little out of HCN's normal territory, to West Texas, which shares some climatic similarities with the Southwest, and was similarly crushed by the 1950s drought. We'll hear an oral history of the 1950s drought in West Texas, part of the series "Life By The Drop," a joint reporting project of KUT and Texas Monthly. And we'll talk with Christopher Schwalm, lead author of a recent Nature Geoscience studyanalyzing the 2000 to 2004 drought in the American West and looking at where it sits along the spectrum of potential drier futures projected by global climate models. Spoiler: It ain't good.

]]>No publisherWaterBlog Post2012/08/29 09:11:26 GMT-6ArticleWest of 100: Droughts past, present and futurehttp://www.hcn.org/articles/west-of-100-droughts-past-present-and-future
An oral history of the 1950s drought in West Texas, and a look at what the 2000 to 2004 drought could portend for the future.

This summer, the rest of the country has gotten a taste of something the American West has always lived with, and persistently for the last decade: drought. As of August, more than half of the country was experiencing at least moderate drought -- and in many places it was worse than that, with drought conditions that are considered severe, extreme, or exceptional. Huge corn crops in the Midwest won't even be harvested. The Mississippi River is being dredged to maintain a channel deep enough for barges. Here in Paonia, Colo., High Country News' hometown, irrigation season ended more than a month earlier than last year.

Of course, drought has always been a fact of Western life. But with the specter of climate change hanging over every extreme weather event these days, this year's drought, and the dry years that have preceded it, have people wondering: Is this normal? Is this the new normal?

So for this edition of West of 100, we're going to take a look at droughts past, present and future. We're venturing a little out of HCN's normal territory, to West Texas, which shares some climatic similarities with the Southwest, and was similarly crushed by the 1950s drought. We'll hear an oral history of the 1950s drought in West Texas, part of the series "Life By The Drop," a joint reporting project of KUT and Texas Monthly. And we'll talk with Christopher Schwalm, lead author of a recent Nature Geoscience study analyzing the 2000 to 2004 drought in the American West and looking at where it sits along the spectrum of potential drier futures projected by global climate models. Spoiler: It ain't good.

Tune in to West of 100 around the middle of each month. Available via our RSS feed, or subscribe for free through iTunes.

]]>No publisherWaterMultimediaAudio2012/08/28 09:00:00 GMT-6ArticleGlobal warming, local politicshttp://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/global-warming-local-politics
Los Angeles blazes new trails in climate adaptation"I was a victim of the snow," former Chicago mayor Michael Bilandic told Chicago Magazine in 2000, referring to his failed 1979 reelection bid. Bilandic replaced the first Mayor Daley, who died in 1976, in the midst of his sixth term, and he was expected to glide back into office. He was the Democratic "machine's" chosen one post-Daley, which is tantamount to winning a Republican primary in Wyoming -- you're a shoo-in in the general election. Bilandic was undone, it is said, by '79's brutal blizzards. "The city's snow removal was so terrible," the New York Times reported in Bilandic's obituary, "that people guessed Mayor Daley must have taken the snowplows with him." Drive around Chicago in the winter today, and you might say the memories still linger.

Many public parking spots shoveled out by hand are occupied by lawn chairs. The chairs carry a message all Chicagoans understand: "I did my own snow removal. Park in my spot, and you might find your tires slashed."

Bilandic's '79 loss remains a cautionary tale for mayors today: fix potholes, plow, keep the lights on. And it helps explain why cities' plans for adapting to climate change are far ahead of the federal government's. Mayors are accountable to their constituents for the annoyances of everyday life in a way congressmen, senators and presidents aren't. And for many urban dwellers, climate change will expand the list of inconveniences that burden day-to-day life -- higher summertime electric bills, for instance, or more frequent restrictions on water use.

"Climate change is a profoundly local issue," says Paul Bunje, executive director of the Center for Climate Change Solutions at UCLA. "Cities are at the front lines of dealing with (the impacts.) Nothing happens at the federal level, or at Rio. Mayors are more responsive because it matters to people that live (in their cities.)"

Adds Alex Hall, a climate modeler and professor of atmospheric and oceanic science at UCLA: "It's not the end of the earth. It's just a problem like any other to deal with."

Since global climate models don't project impacts at a scale that's useful to local policy makers, to help frame the climate problem in practical terms, Hall and a team of researchers have undertaken a groundbreaking series of studies that project the impacts of climate change on Los Angeles and its environs neighborhood by neighborhood over the next 30 to 50 years. The fine-scale modeling being done for SoCal is extremely expensive and a young science -- according to Bunje, Hall is one of only a few modelers in the world with the expertise to do it. "Regional downscaling of this sort is still a relatively rare phenomenon in the climate community," says Bunje. "We just happened to have someone in this region who is an expert at it."

This type of modeling is especially important for L.A., which is sandwiched between desert and ocean with mountains in between, and made up of a patchwork of microclimates that may feel the effects of climate change in much different ways. Funded by the City of L.A. and the U.S. Department of Energy, Hall and his team's first study, which projected temperature changes for the region and was released this summer, found that coastal communities will warm the least, about 3.5 to 4 degrees, and that the highest reaches of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains will warm the most, more than 5 degrees. The hottest areas of the region will also warm faster, and experience more "extreme hot days" in the summer. The San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys, blocked from the ocean's cooling effect by mountains, will be swept with up to four times the number of super hot days they currently experience, while the L.A. Basin, which is blessed by the ocean's cool breeze, will sweat its way through about three times the scorchers it does now. Similar modeling is on the way for precipitation, snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, sea level rise, and the Santa Ana winds, which drive wildfire in SoCal.

The studies will "give power to people making decisions," says Hall. "It's not just us saying, 'you have to plan for this amount of warming,' but, 'here's the range of outcomes, here's the most likely outcome, you can choose which risk level to tolerate."

"The City of L.A., for example, invests in heat trauma centers, designed to make sure people who are vulnerable to heat extremes have places to go during these types of events. One question was: Where do they put these centers? The study helped the city determine where heat extremes would be greatest, and they can overlay the map we've created with their distributions of vulnerable populations. If they spend X amount of dollars, and they have Y tolerance for risk, or their goal is to reduce morbidity by 80 percent, what is the optimal distribution?"

L.A. also has a tree planting program, says Hall. Lest you scoff at what may sound more like a feel-good greening project than a serious climate adaptation strategy, he says trees in L.A. can have a significant cooling effect on local environments. "And there are questions about where those investments are most effective," that his study can help answer, he says. "So this is another example of how this information provides a way to view this problem in very practical terms. I think when you start to see it that way, it becomes harder to be fearful of it."